


"Did You Get My Letter?"

by Skiesen



Series: 100 Ways Lena Oxton Loves and is Loved [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Loss, Lost in Time, Speedy Recovery, Tracer/Mercy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 21:24:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7190990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skiesen/pseuds/Skiesen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Angela Ziegler were to say that she wasn’t afraid the chronal accelerator embedded in Lena’s chest would malfunction at any given point, she’d be lying. </p><p>In which her fears come true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Did You Get My Letter?"

**Author's Note:**

> (47/100)

If Angela Ziegler were to say that she wasn’t afraid the chronal accelerator embedded in Lena’s chest would malfunction at any given point, she’d be lying. 

She was good at pushing her fears down, however, and put her faith in Winston’s work-- and her own. At the end of the day, the facts lay the same regardless of how good she was. 

The chronal accelerator was a mere prototype, and to expect it work without any hitches was illogical.

Knowing that and acknowledging it were two very different things, though, she realized the day that she woke and Lena wasn’t there. Her lover-- no, her partner at this point, she thought with a smile, was no stranger to early mornings, and she wondered if maybe the Brit had some errant errand to run that she’d forgotten to tell her about.

Even better-- maybe she was doing something adorably  _ Lena,  _ like trying to make breakfast, or do the gardening for her, or… whatever other sort of cavity-causing sugary-sweetness she could possibly think of. 

Angela Ziegler did not expect to spend that evening sobbing her throat, her eyes, her chest all raw and ragged, exposed and shredded in wake of the realization that Lena ‘Tracer’ Oxton was again, lost in time. 

The doctor spent more hours with Winston than she had before, even when they had originally been working on the device to ground Tracer in their plane of existence-- she had cared for Lena before, yes, but this time she felt as though she’d lost her  _ smile,  _ her  _ happiness.  _ She was a realistic woman, but the thought ‘how could this happen’ despite her knowing exactly  _ how  _ could not be stopped. She would apologize later, perhaps, for yelling at Winston to try  _ harder.  _ Bring her  _ home.  _

She had never felt more exhausted in her life. Hours were spent pouring over the science, how to fix the accelerator when-- not if-- when Lena came back. There had to be a way to keep the forces inside that small cylinder powerful enough to keep her still, and be damned if she wouldn’t find it. She was Angela Ziegler, one of the most brilliant doctors on this  _ planet,  _ a pioneer in so many fields. She could find a way to bring her sunshine back. 

The first month mark was the hardest, if she had to think back on it. No one had seen a glimpse of her-- not a trace, no word, nothing. The day Winston sat down on the floor rubbing his eyes while she tried to focus hard on the text before her and said to her “Doctor Ziegler, we may have to accept the worst. She may not--”

The slam of her hands down on that desk was one of the most abrupt and sudden shows of anger she’d ever displayed in front of him, let alone anyone. Her pale eyes were rimmed red, dragged down by puffy purple and gray, and flashing fury in his direction. 

“She  _ will  _ come back. She  _ will.” _

By the third month, nothing smelled like Lena anymore. She coveted dirty laundry of hers, shirts and pants and jackets, but she’d worn them so much they just smelled… stale. The loose ones fit loose enough she could pull them over her head and sit on her couch, the neckline pulled up over her nose while she cried. At least she couldn’t sob anymore. It hurt too much to cry like that-- took energy she no longer had. No, the tears leaked like sad mockeries of the grief that they stemmed from, nothing compared to the torrential downpour of agony that continued to isolate her inside her own head. 

Small blessings, that. 

Her routine was growing monotonous. She would wake up, sometimes she’d make herself breakfast or tea. Sometimes she’d frown heavily at the empty seat at the breakfast table for too long before she left for the HQ again. The next ten to twenty hours were spent reading and testing new ideas, trying to push back the mounting despair that was rising oh so slowly in her heart. She came home, sometimes ate again. Brushed her fingers over Lena’s things. Showered occasionally, if she had the motivation to. Checked her email in her office. Went to bed. Rinse, repeat. And repeat. Repeat again.

The doctor ate a sad excuse for dinner and showered, her feet dragging across the hardwood floor as she made her way into her office. She rose a hand to flick on the light.

She froze.

Angela knew that she hadn’t been particularly neat the past few months, but the mess that was strewn across her desk and the floor was most definitely not her doing. Stepping warily through the threshold, she felt her heart rising high in her throat. Her office didn’t hold any of Overwatch’s secret information, thankfully, but there were still  _ personal  _ things there, and knowing that someone had gone through them was enough to set her on edge.

She picked up her chair, which had been kicked back and over, away from her desk, leaving it upright and letting her tired eyes flick over the papers scattered on her desk. Nothing… seemed gone through, actually. Her cup of pens was knocked over, stacks of papers scattered…

When she saw the deliberately laid out note sitting on the middle of her desk in a very familiar scrawl, she swore in that she had never felt her heart throw itself against her ribcage as strongly as it had in that moment, launching her entire body towards the single sheet of paper like a catapult.

Her fingers scrambled for it, shaking already as she brought it close enough to her face to read, and she could already feel the tears.

Lena had been here. Lena had been in her office long enough to write this note for her. 

She had  _ come home.  _

Her handwriting was rushed and frantic-- Lena didn’t have very nice handwriting to begin with, but this would rival doctor chicken scratch. She would know, right? Angela could hear the fear in her written words, see the sweat beading along that soft brow and the frown pulling at those sweet lips, and Lord she wished she could feel her in her arms but…

The note was so scrambled and hectic. 

_ I miss you. _

I miss you, too. 

_ Tell Winston and everyone I miss them.  _ __  
__  
Of course, Lena. 

_ I know you can fix me. _

Her fingers tightened against the paper, threatening to tear it at the edges.

_ I’m sca _

Scared. Lena was scared, and there was nothing that she could do to help her. Her words had cut off then, the completed ‘a’ the last letter, the pen that had been used laying presumably where it had dropped after she’d faded from reality again.

Angela sat down in her chair, hunched over and staring down at the note. What should she even do? Tell Winston? Call him right now? What was the point when she was already gone?There would be nothing to do about it until tomorrow, but how was she to sleep when she knew Lena  _ had come back,  _ had been standing right in her office, even if only for a few minutes? How could she do anyt--

She startled when a tear struck the paper, the sudden blotch snapping her out of her frantic thoughts. 

No, there was nothing she could do in this moment, but… she could take the chance to sit and try not to be absolutely overwhelmed by the emotions cycloning in her head. The anger that she hadn’t gotten to  _ see _ her, the fear that this would be the last time she came back, the sadness from the letter itself...

At least she felt hope at the forefront.

__________

Seeing Winston’s face light up when she brought the note in early the next morning made Angela feel relieved. The change in mood in the lab was palpable. There was hope again, there was a new drive to attack their dilemma. She had come back once-- she would come back again. Lena Oxton was too strong, too  _ stubborn  _ to let her life be cut short by something like a technical malfunction. 

That’s what she clung to at least, every day she spent in there, as she and Winston  _ created  _ a new and stronger power source for the chronal accelerator. Experimenting with metals and nanobiology and other things that Tracer would have told them to say slow, so she can understand it a bit better.

They kept the note magneted to the whiteboard they often wrote down quick ideas on, to the left corner. It was motivation.

It was joined by other letters, too. 

The second note was a little less hasty, when she found it in the guest room some two weeks later. Angela had left notepads with pens in every room of her damned house. Just in case. She didn’t want Lena wasting time looking for something to write with, to write on. Her plan worked.

_ Thanks for the notepad, Doc. _

The start of the second letter made her laugh, even as her hand rose to wipe the fresh tears from her eyes. Lena told her she’d flicked in and out of existence a few times, not long enough to write, but long enough to feel real. She was sorry for not being able to see her. She couldn’t control when it happened. Tell everybody she missed them, again. Sometimes she felt more solid than others. She’d see her soon. She missed her.

_ I love you. _

The closing declaration made her heart clench. 

_ I love you, too, Lena.  _

The second letter was joined by a third a few days letter, just a post-it sized note saying ‘I’m here’. A fourth describing how the accelerator had felt days before it sputtered and gave up. 

The papers were adding up, but a part of Angela was scared she’d never have Lena back in her arms again.

_______________

It had been a good two weeks since she’d done the dishes. Before, Lena had always done them. She’d been doing them for literal years. It was a chore she’d nearly forgotten how to do. Her blonde hair up in the usual high ponytail, wearing a loose button down with the sleeves pushed up over her elbows and a pair of shorts that were most definitely not hers, she attacked them with vigor. The bags under her eyes still weighed so heavily, but the constant despondency that her lined face before the first letter had faded. She was just tired, mostly.

How do you sleep without your sweet dreams?

Angela scrubbed at a pot she’d accidentally burned stew in, the blackened marks along the side refusing to leave. She’d let it soak for days, and still, it wasn’t lifting. Leaning forward, she put her entire body into the motions of scrubbing, mumbling in German about stupid stews, burning too easily while she was busy writing down a new idea to tell Winston about.

“Doc?”

The pot struck the sink, and every other damn dish in the thing when she dropped it. 

Angela had never felt the world slow down so acutely after hearing that single word, behind her and to the left. Her heart beat faster, she could feel it in her throat, loud in her temples, down to her toes. She couldn’t breathe. How could she? She might be gone when she turned around, if she did. That breath would be all it took.

“Angela?” 

She closed her eyes and shakily inhaled, unsure how her body managed to move, to pivot and look at the woman speaking to her. 

Lena was standing there, maybe five steps away. Smiling. She looked as tired as Angela felt. Her hands were shaking. Angela’s were too. How did she get so close? Why were her own shoulders shaking? Was she crying? When did that happen? 

The situation hit her like an avalanche in the expanse of a few seconds, and suddenly she was sobbing and clutching Lena as close as she could, fingers clawing at the fabric of the shirt she had been asleep in, months before, crushing the smaller woman, burying her face against her neck and inhaling every bit of her she could.

“It’s okay, love,” Lena whispered, her arms wrapped just as tightly around Angela’s mid-section, and just hearing the words from her mouth winded her like a punch to the solar plexus, quick and painful. 

“I guess I don’t need a notebook this time?” she whispered, and Angela wished she could laugh, wished she could do something other than wail. She was stronger than this, she knew-- she was stoic and calculated and smart and composed. 

Except for maybe today. 

“I missed you so much,  _ liebe,”  _ she managed, her voice breaking between her rapid breaths and tears. She pulled back enough to raise her trembling fingers to touch Lena’s face, as wet as hers despite the sad smile on her face. 

“I miss you, too.” Lena leaned into the touch, sighing softly, arms tightening around Angela’s waist again. “I’m sorry. But I--... This…. It won’t keep long. I can feel... “ she trailed off, her words shaky with fear and uncertainty. 

“ _ No.”  _ No, no no no, don’t do this, this can’t-- 

“Angela, hey, listen,” she whispered, her hand pulling back, one covering Angela’s against her cheek and the other fluttering along the blonde’s jaw. Already, the doctor could see her blurring-- that was the only way to describe it, when she got lost. Her molecules dissociating from one another, pulling apart and fading into another plane, or another time. She knew the science. But seeing it happen before her…

It would have been less painful to reach into her chest and rip her heart out. 

“It’s alright, love,” Lena told her, voice soft, tears welling at the corner of her eyes. Fear was clear-- she was so scared,  _ damnit,  _ and still, she was trying to comfort  _ her….  _

“Please, no…” Angela pleaded, trying so hard to hold onto her. If she kept her hands on her, she wouldn’t disappear, right? She felt herself curling in as the pain began to settle-- she wasn’t even gone yet, and already she could feel her sunshine’s absence. 

“I’ll be back before you know it.” 

No more words were spoken between them as Lena faded entirely into a haze of pale blue, Angela grasping at empty space. 

She didn’t know how she hit the ground, exactly, but her knees would remember the next day how she did, collapsing on herself and reduced to raw grief, holding her arms across her chest in the most pathetic attempt to keep herself from falling apart.

 


End file.
